Depression affects many people, but the people that suffer from depression have trouble talking to anyone about it. People that do not have depression, and have never suffered from it, do not usually understand.

This has the effect of isolating the people that do suffer from depression. The loneliness and isolation just make the depression worse and it can feel hopeless to the person.

Close relationships are important. People need to feel supported and accepted. If you feel that you have to hide your depression, then those relationships can feel false or plastic.

It is easy for you to get stuck in repeating circles of thoughts and there is no one to tell them to. Fears can become bigger and feel more ominous as they repeat and circle around in your head.

Sadness needs a release of some sort. It is part of the human condition to grieve and feel sad about things. The normal process of feeling sadness or grief has a progressive element to it.

Once those emotions and thoughts are caught in a never-ending circle, it can feel hopeless, like there is no way out.

Just being able to talk about those thoughts with another compassionate person can help to lift the burden. Even if you have to find someone in the blogging world, or another place online to talk to.

Therapists can help in certain ways, but it is not quite the same as being supported and understood by another person who cares about your well being.

You may have to proactively reach out for someone to talk to. Don’t give up just because you are met with roadblocks along your path. There may be someone waiting just on the other side of the roadblock.

There are so many people in the world. Even though it may feel like no one can understand you…there are some people that can understand.

When you feel like self isolating and giving up, just rest up and then try again. Try different places to meet people and different places to connect with people online.

You matter. There are other people that will care and not minimize your feelings of depression.

Depression is serious. Your emotional and mental health are very important. You have value as a human being and your experiences do matter.

Sometimes reaching out to someone else who is suffering can also help you. There is value is connecting with someone who has had similar feelings and experiences inside of their own mind.

If you feel like you don’t matter and that there is no reason for anyone to care…those thoughts are just coming from conditioning that you have experienced.

We are not born feeling worthless or inadequate. Childhood programming and societal brainwashing puts those programs into your head.

You do matter. Realize that you have just as much of a right to be loved and cared for as anyone else does. Some people just ended up in different circumstances.

Any negative thoughts about yourself that have to do with not being good enough, or not being worthy, are programs that were conditioned into you.

These programs are like viruses that start as a small toxin and quickly replicate, until they become pervasive. The on-going background voice that says “who do you think you are” is not coming from your authentic true thoughts.

Being told you were not good enough, or made to feel inadequate, by parents or care givers as a child, you were instructed to feel that there was something innately wrong with you. This is an illusion created by others who should have been building your self esteem.

Not all parents do this on purpose. But the repetitive tapes that play at the back of your mind are just as destructive, whether they were intentionally installed or not.

It is not a matter of being judgemental about the parenting styles of your parents. It is about recognizing the false beliefs you are carrying in your subconscious.

As long as you feel these beliefs are true, your brain will search for and interpret situations that prove these things to be correct.

Looking at these negative beliefs about yourself as conditioning, can begin the process of disproving the false beliefs.

Emotional abuse can lead you to see things in black and white about yourself. You are either right or wrong, successful or a failure, good at something or bad at it.

Life is more than a black and white picture. Reality is malleable and a rigid view of reality can be like a prison.

It can help to remember who the sources were ( or who the current sources are) that These black and white views of yourself come from. Are these sources capable of really knowing you, your full creative potential…your value to other humans?

Once you can see that the people who programmed inadequacy into your brain had some personal agenda of their own…then you can begin to realize that your brain has accepted opinions and manipulation as reality and truth. It has become embedded in your subconscious As truth.

But you do not have to accept things as true just because someone told you it was true. Other people’s opinions about your true value and worth have power when you believe they are based in reality.

Questioning the false beliefs about yourself and about your reality, that were taught to you, can be the beginning of re-wiring harmful conditioning that goes back to your childhood.

I am feeling better today after sleeping about 15 hours yesterday. Sometimes we have to listen to our bodies telling us we are exhausted.

Exhaustion can come from sleep deprivation, emotional stress, anxiety, depression, financial or mental stress, loneliness, or living is resistance to our situations.

We will discuss resistance in future posts, but basically it is a state of not fully accepting the circumstances we are in. Not to say that you should accept them, but living in situations that are unnatural to our higher, spiritual selves is draining.

Being an individual being means not having to just follow along with what others tell you. You should not have to take on the identity that others want you to be. Sometimes other people have their own agenda that they are trying to force you to conform to.

Your soul will resist against this. Your brain holds certain beliefs in the subconscious and will resist the efforts of others to make you behave in ways contrary to your core beliefs.

You can continue to live in resistance, which will break you down, and eventually result in disease and illness, or mental illness. Or you can take steps to find a way to live where you are able to be authentic.

Our perceptions about what we see and hear are influenced by the beliefs we hold. Sometimes feelings come up about what we think we know to be true that do not seem to match what is happening.

There is an incongruence between our rational thinking brain and our feelings. When this happens, we want to resolve the difference.

The tendency is for us to repress any feelings that do not logically fit the situation. Most of us have been conditioned to believe what we see and hear, over what we feel.

This conditioning is like a computer “program” that has been installed into us from an early age. Depending on your family, you may have been taught to keep your feelings to yourself if they do not match what others want you to feel.

Even what we see, and the meanings we attach to what we see, is influenced and interfered with by this programming. Many of the core beliefs you hold did not originate from your own mind.

Any feelings about yourself which are negative were programmed into you. Shame and feeling that you deserve to be blamed for things was programmed into you.

Not listening to your own feelings was programmed into you. People that perceive things very differently from the rest of their family are often forced to alter their perceptions.

Society tends to discourage allowing your feelings and intuition to guude you. If you were brought up in an emotionally abusive environment then you were trained that there are consequences for trying to have your feelings validated.

Highly sensitive people are scapegoated by abusive families. They are often criticized or mocked by society. The pain of being rejected can make highly sensitive people shut down emotionally.

Highly sensitive people, empaths and anyone who perceives the world differently than they are told to, are treated harshly by many others. The ones who like the status quo to remain in place, without being tampered with, highly dislike anyone pointing out faults in the system of thought that are being maintained by the group.

Many people are able to go along with the crowd, even if it involves a shared psychosis…meaning that someone created a narrative that is not true and told everone that is was true….and out of fear of rejection, everyone followed along. Over time peoplle who blindly follow others, begin to trust that their own perceptions are not real.

You cannot see anything that conflicts with your core beliefs, if those beliefs are firmly wired into your subconscious brain. You will only see, hear and perceive things in your environment that make sense with your beliefs.

It is not the conscious beliefs that really drive us, but it is the subconscious beliefs. Your subconscious holds certain things to be true and others to be either impossible or highly unlikely.

In emotionally abusive, and otherwise abusive households, the child that resists accepting the narratives that the abuser creates, is scapegoated and told they are “difficult” or that they are mentally disturbed. No one acknowledges your perspective or the fact that your feelings matter.

Maybe you grew up only to find yourself in situations with toxic people, that played out this scenario of you being invalidated and unheard over and over again.

You were programmed to see these things as proof that there is something wrong with you.

There isn’t anything innately wrong with you. Your heightened perceptions about the feelings and intentions of other people are a gift. A gift you may have cursed a time or two…..but a gift nonetheless.

The more you try to act like and be like other people, the more miserable you will be. Highly sensitive, empathic people have a strong need to be authentic.

You must embrace your authentic self without shame. You do not have to feel weird or out of place.

There is an impor purpose that only you can fill. You can learn to tell the difference between what you “are supposed to” perceive, and what you actually do perceive.

If you have PTSD or an anxiety disorder, some days you have to take breaks between your tasks. Different people are triggered by different things and becoming overloaded can result in a complete meltdown or panic attack.

Pushing through your day without a break to calm yourself will drain you. It can take a lot of energy to do errands and activities, when you are being exposed to triggers in your environment.

Being sleep deprived can add to your anxiety. It is important to find ways to get enough rest and sleep. If anxiety keeps you from sleeping well at night, your body and your brain may require naps during the day. Self care is important.

If you need breaks between doing things, try to think ahead to plan enough time to take them. Be gentle and adaptable with yourself.

You are your own best advocate. Draw boundaries when you need them. Think of how you would treat a friend in circumstances like the ones you are in at the time, if your friend also suffered from PTSD.

Sometimes it gives some perspective to think of what allowances and flexibility you would offer someone else. Looking at yourself from an observer point of view can help you gain some perspective and design coping methods for yourself.

Living with chronic pain is difficult emotionally and mentally.

Every aspect of your life is affected and you have to adapt each and every day based on the level of pain. It is difficult for other people to understand.

Sometimes you have to cancel plans or leave places early. You may need help doing things or walking up the stairs. Fatigue haunts you like a malicious ghost that no one can see but you. It is an invisible illness that can be cruel and make you feel lonely.

You know that other people have chronic pain also, but you still feel like you are the only one much of the time.

Days spent struggling to do the simplest tasks drain you physically and emotionally. No one can see your pain and it is hard to find any validation for what you are going through.

Your social circle may have dwindled down to the last few who are willing to be understanding. Some of you are completely isolated from friends and even family has moved on without you. People get tired of hearing someone complain about their invisible illness.

Some people think you are just trying to get attention.

This is backwards because chronic pain tends to have to opposite effect of getting attention. Many people do not realize this.

Isolation has its own negative effects on your psychological state. Depression falls down over you like a dark cloud. There are days when you just stay in bed because the pain is too great….both emotionally and physically.

Chronic pain can be caused by all kinds of things.

Arthritis, fibromyalgia, spinal problems, diseases, and chronic illnesses. Pain can be mostly localized to certain parts of the body, or change locations from day to day. The mental pain is always a part of living with chronic pain….possible the worst part.

Finding connection with other people can be difficult, but it is important for you not to feel alone. Feeling isolated and alienated for a continues period of time will wear on you and drain you. Your soul needs to heal and you need to feel special.

Old emotional wounds can be triggered by depression and anxiety.

Feeling alone with pain can bring up emotional flashbacks from your past. Many people with chronic pain have some kind of ghosts from their past that haunt them. The feeling of being invalidated may be something you also felt in your childhood.

The inner child that was not heard is now left alone and invalidated again.

Being alone with the emotional wounds feels like torment. Since you feel that people are already tired of hearing you express your feeling about your physical pain, you may be hesitant to talk about old emotional wounds with anyone.

You struggle to survive each day, and you may push those emotional wounds deep down inside you. The pain will get worse from doing this, but it is hard to find any other way to survive.

Pain gets worse with depression, and depression gets worse with pain.

You are more than your chronic pain condition.

You are not your body and you are not your thoughts. You are so much more than those things. The world has a way of confusing us about who we really are.

You may not feel like it, because your life feels like it revolves around it. You had other plans for your life than living this way.

The unfairness of this can make you feel hopeless and question your purpose for living. You feel limited in the amount of things you can do for others.

But you are worth as much as everyone else. It is the soul and spirit of you that has innate value.

Your value is not based of what you can or cannot do. The uniqueness of your mind, heart are limitless.

We can be broken and bruised, but we are resilient. Your resilience comes from your higher self… the self that does not live in the body and is not limited to the physical self.

Love is an unstoppable force of energy that exists all around you. You are surrounded by invisible energies that are yours to draw from Self love is an important step to emotional and mental healing.

Parents with narcissistic personality disorder never think of their adult children as adults. There is no respect for boundaries or your right to make your own decisions.

While other parents guide their children to become independent adults, narcissistic parents attempt to condition their children to serve their agenda.

Whether you are the golden child or the scapegoat is dependent on a variety of factors. Usually one child is chosen to be the golden child. If they comply with the wishes of the narcissistic parent, then they will probably retain that role. Otherwise they are in danger of being knocked off of the pedestal.

The scapegoat child is often the one that insisted on being authentic and questioned or exposed the methods of the narcissistic parent. Other times the scapegoated child just got that role because there was already a golden child in place.

The narcissistic parent projects the qualities of their grandios false self onto the chosen one…the golden child. There is unreasonable pressure put onto this child to live up to what the parent demands.

Scapegoated children can be subjected to mobbing by the family members. The narcissist creates the narrative for the family. Anyone who does not follow blindly is usually punished.

As part of this shared psychosis, created by the narcissist, the blame for any faults, failures or shortcomings of the narcissist will be put onto the scapegoat.

Different families have somewhat different dynamics, since there can be more than two children. Some children may be ignored completely because they do not fill the role of either the golden child or the scapegoat.

Anyone can be knocked off the pedestal at any time. Narcissists can be vindictive and quick to punish with emotional or other means.

Adult children of narcissistic parents carry trauma from their childhood. How they interact with the narcissistic parent may keep them in a childish lifestyle, or they may divorce the narcissistic parent and break contact with them.

Other adult children struggle to maintain independence while the narcissist makes their lives a living hell.

Learning about narcissism and pathological liars, can help you to understand why your relationship with your parents is like other people’s. Malignant narcissists are master deceivers and manipulators.

If you grew up with a narcissistic parent then you may be suffering from C-PTSD from emotional, mental or other abuses. Finding out more about emotional trauma and C-PTSD can help you to find freedom from the narcissistic chains that bind you.

Even if you have gone No Contact, or have limited contact, the emotional trauma and emotional flashbacks can still permeate your life.

🌷Check out the gentlekindness facebook page and gentlekindnesscoaching.com site for more information and help with Overcoming Narcissistic Abuse

While our brain is designed to protect us, sometimes the different parts of your brain fail to coordinate properly. The triunal brain theory teaches us that we are driven by the parts of the brain we are not conscious of.

It isn’t that we cannot discover what beliefs the subconscious brain is holding. It is more that we do not recognize the importance of doing so. There are methods of trance, hypnosis and NLP that can guide you to connect with what is driving your choices and behaviors.

Staying in a toxic relationship is something that many people do. Outsiders to the relationship may either judge you for stsying in it, or they may judge you for considering leaving it. In fact there may be both kinds of social pressure coming at you from different directions.

The subconscious brain holds core beliefs that have been imbedded and programmed since childhood. One belief that may have been programmed into you is that “good family members” tolerate any and every behavior from other family members.

You may be holding the belief that while breaking off relationships with people outside the family is okay, you should never break off relationships with family members.

Toxic family members are often catered to by the family. When other family members become exhausted and drainef of all their energy, they expect you to take over the “catering” role.

Saying No to the toxic family member will be punished and retaliated against. They will shame and guilt you, using yout “brain programming” against you.

It is often the person that put the programs there in the first place, that is emotionally manipulating you. They know which buttons to press because they put them there in the first place. Or they witnesssed how you were trained to feel.

In toxic families, you are not only trainef to behave in a certain way, but you are conditioned to FEEL certain ways in certain situations. A toxic family member will train you to respond to their emotional manipulation, in order to avoid real or perceived consequences.

Getting in touch with our feelings and beliefs that are behind the scenes, can help you to take your power back. Someone can only emotionally manipulate you if they are able to elicit those negative feelings in you.

When you are in a situation where the toxic person is making you feel bad…STOP and evaluate what you are feeling. Decide to detach emotionally from the situation and assess it like an observer.

Observe and notice what thoughts are coming up at the back of your brain. What thoughts, fears and drives are at work in your brain?

Sometimes the very things we do in order to avoid pain, will end up keeping us in a relationship that gives us continuous pain.

The subconscious brain will kick on the fight or flight mode, when we are in a confrontation or conversation with the toxic family member. This function of fight or flight, wants to cause you to take an immediate action to get rid of the threat and avoid harm. But your reptilian brain and your limbic system are only operating out of what associations that have been programmed in, and the beliefs that they hold.

If you were raised in a family with a toxic person ( or people) then there are “false beliefs” that are carried by your subconscious. The feelings you have that drive you to comply with the toxic person, are based on a false belief system.

It is in the best interest of the malignant, pathological person for you to hold onto beliefs like the following.

1. The toxic person does not harm me intentionally

2. They cannot help their behavior

3. They think their behavior is the best for the family

4. I am not worthy of standing up for myself

5. Standing up to the emotionally abusive person is rude

6. I have to do what the manipulative person wants, if I cannot reasonably get them to see my side

7. The toxic person hears me when I explain my side

8. Going against what the family wants would make me a bad person

9 Deep down the toxic person actually appreciates all I do for them

10. The manipulative family member would break down and not be able to go on, if I stopped catering to them

11. The family would fall apart without my holding it together

12. My independence and happiness is not a priority over the family

13. If I really needed something they would be there for me

14. My needs, desires and dreams are not as important as the other family members, or as the toxic person

15. My perceptions are not valid when they are different than those of the family, or the manipulative person

16. Prioritizing my mental, emotional and physical health over the demands of the family is wrong.

17. I could not survive without the family

18. I owe my family, and the toxic person, to stay and cater to them for my entire life

19. If I leave they will no longer love me. ( This is based on the false assumption that they love you now)

20. The toxic person loves me. They just don’t know how to show it

21. Taking abuse from someone proves your love for them.

These are all incorrect, untrue, false beliefs that are carried my adult children of toxic families. Sometimes your family is just who you were born to.

You have no obligation to people just because you share a blood line with them. All the time and energy they demand from you could be spent with people who actually deserve it.

There are people waiting to meet you, who would support and care for you. There is a higher path and sporitual connectedness for your life.

You have to emotionally detach from the narcissists,psychopaths, and emotionally manipulative, abusive people in your life.

Chances are the family will not fall to ruins without you, although they may try to manipulate you into thinking that. They can either respect you as an individual with rights and boundaries, or they can live without you.

If someone has consistently shown you that they do not have a desire to care about how you feel, then stop expecting to find kindness and caring from them.

They may not want to care about your feelings. They may not have the capacity to empathize with you. Either way, you cannot force people or convert people to the side of kindness and compassion.

If someone never listens to your thoughts and feelings then they possibly never will. Communication goes two directions. If you always listen to their side, and they never listen to your side, then see it for what it is.

If your communication is consistently not being heard, no matter what the circumstance, then most likely this person has no intention to hear you.

Holding onto beliefs that you can “make them” care about you, is not productive. Find alternative ways to deal with conflicts and situations with them.

Evaluate what they do with information you give them. What has happened in the past, when you explained your reasons, and your thoughts to them?

Do they end up using it against you?

Do they completely disregard it?

Do they hear and remember what you say?

Do they claim later on, not to remember what you said?

Do they make fun of what you say and belittle you?

Do they laugh at you?

Do they become angry when you present your side of a situation?

Do they give you equal time to explain yourself or do they cut you off?

Do they bring other people, who seem inappropriate, into your conversations?

Look at the history and make observations in present time. See if they are the same way with other people.

Learn what their usual tactics are, in order to get their way.

Observe their responses to situations where you or others try to stand up for an opposing or alternative opinion.

Making these observations will help you to learn things about this person’s behavior, attitude and patterns.

Often people that are rigid, unbending, and always right, have observable, predictable response patterns.

If you can learn this about them, then you can use it in order to find ways to deal with their rigidity.

You have to work around people sometimes. Most importantly you have to protect your mental state and not allow people to cross into your emotional boundaries.

You cannot make them care. You cannot logically or rationally convince them that they should care about the feelings of others, or your feelings in particular.

But you may notice that you have been doing things to put yourself in their line of fire. You are giving them the advantage, by assuming that deep down they are really a caring person.

The more you believe that an abusive person really wants to work with you , the more advantage they have over you.

Not only that. They are probably fully aware that you want them to care and that you believe they want to.

There are people that will use your kind beliefs about them really being a caring person inside, against you in situations.

Observe people like this with an objective, scientific like mindset. Take notes on each situation and how they respond.

If you are dealing with a rigid person that never has empathy, then you need to know their response patterns. It should not blindside you, when they respond with a completely narcissistic attitude.

Dealing with these kinds of people can be stressful and crush your self esteem and feelings of self worth.

Situations where people like this are harmful to you are: as bosses, supervisors, neighbors, therapists, doctors, landlords and other positions where they can affect you.

Intimate relationships with anyone who has no empathy or compassion for you are even more dangerous.

People will not always believe what you have experienced with someone who lacks compassion. You cannot always get your opinions and observations about them validated.

Also be careful talking about this person to others.

You do not know who they have manipulated into doing what. In a work situation, there may be minions who will report back to the narcissist about things you say.

That is why it will help you to take personal notes. Write down what you said and exactly what they said in response.

If you are on the phone, you can do this with a pen and paper during the conversation. If the interaction is in person, then take notes when you have privacy to write them

Keep your notes as “word for word” as possible. Do not change their wording to what you think they must have meant.

The exact wordings will help you later on, when you look over lots of interactions on paper. You can find inconsistencies and gaslighting tactics this way.

There are compassionate people, but all people are not compassionate. There are people who care about what happens to you and there are people who never will.

Depression can make you feel like staying in bed and not interacting with other people. You know that if you go out of the house, you will feel different and out of place.

Other people will not understand your inner world. You feel like you will be forced to put on a mask to fit in. It is difficult to function.

You get more and more internalized. So you self isolate, and limit your social interactions. This is understandable because certain kinds of interactions can be emotionally traumatizing.

You feel like the one person that is out of place in the world. You sit alone and hear the thoughts that come up from your subconscious. Thoughts that there is something wrong with you.

Some of the feelings you get are from emotional flashbacks. There are things that happened and ways you were rejected during childhood that cause your subconscious to store these kinds of feelings.

If you can identify the false beliefs behind your thoughts, then the feelings can be sat with and calmed. You were not born feeling like you did not belong in the world. These thoughts were taught to you….even brainwashed into you.

When you have a feeling that is painful, like hopelessness…try to discover what core belief that thought is driven by. The belief might be that you are not as good as other people. .. Or that the world is unsafe.

If you are carrying the core belief that you are less adequate than other people…that is a bad programming. These things are programmed into children who do not have emotionally supportive childhoods.

Think back to your childhood and if you were made to feel insignificant, unworthy, unneccesary, or anything else negative. If your thoughts and feelings were dismissed, criticized, or made fun of then you are probably carrying CPTSD…complex post traumatic stress disorder.

People with C-PTSD often get depressed or feel extreme anxiety. You may have trouble keeping up with other people or feeling normal.

Those false core beliefs that were fed to you can be re-programmed. You need to question each one of those negative beliefs about yourself. Be like a scientist attempting to disprove a theory.

If you feel that something is wrong with you compared to other people, then ask what things are Right about you. Write them down. Engage in activities that prove you are as good or better at those activities, than other people are.

Look at the qualities of your parents and whomever fed those negative, false beliefs to you, about yourself. What kind of people are they?

Would you consider those people reliable critics? Did tbey have any agenda in which lowering your power would have helped them?

If those people told you something bad about the character of a person you love right now….would you believe their opinion without question? Or is their opinion not reliable?

You can begin to go out and interact with people in small increments. Go over your present state of mind, before you go out…and before you leave your car. You can just sit in your car for a few minutes and listen to music that calms or peps up your nervous system.

How you feel when you interact with others is based on the current state of your nervous system, how much sleep you have had, your mental state, and your blood sugar.

You can think of those categories and assess each of them, before you go into a store or any other place. Then you will feel more in touch with yourself and have some ways to help yourself.

If you are interested in learning. NLP State Management techniques, you can send me a message via my web site

Gentlekindnesscoaching.com

For information about C-PTSD and how emotional abuse causes depression and anxiety disorders, join us at the gentlekindness facebook page.

You are special. Your gifts and personality are an important part of the puzzle of humanity. You are connected with all living things in an important way.

You matter. You have a unique voice that other people need to hear. You have special characteristics that someone really needs right now.